A little insight on hunting proposals
Lest we let it slip from our minds, folks are still working on trying to find an appropriate proposal for possible hunting restrictions. After exchanging some emails with both Alice Kinman and Kelly Girtz, I wanted to share some of their observations on the matter.
Girtz, who told me he's accompanied Doug Lowry on a few of his fact-finding missions and meetings on this topic, sent over some interesting background facts on hunting in Athens-Clarke County.
- There are very few parcels of land where discharging a firearm in Clarke County is legal, given the current ordinance requiring discharge to occur 300 yards from a structure and 150 yards from a public road (though there are some exceptions in that code - such as an Agricultural Permit for the benefit of growers who seek to limit damage to their crops). Lowry had the Planning Department put together a map of the county including all streets and structures, along with circles scaled to 300 yards and 150 yards drawn on clear acetate. The parcels of land where discharge is allowable are largely in the Morton Road/Barnett Shoals Corridor, along with just a few other parcels near the northern county border.
- The local deer population is quite dense. As many have read in the Athens Banner-Herald, our deer management region, as designated by the DNR, has approximately 45 deer per square mile of forest. The Quality Deer Management Association believes this is almost twice what the land can sustain. This often leads to deer that are in poor health because of competition for food. Because there are some "refuges" for deer in Clarke, where deer can wander freely (but where hunting is not permitted), the population tends to remain high. This results in high deer/vehicle collision rates, prompting special designation by the DNR of Highway 78 E and W and Highway 129 as "high accident" roads.
- In the 15 years since the ACC Police Department has been keeping electronic records, there has not been a reported hunting-related death in Athens.
It's worth noting that the first two background facts appear to pose a contradictory problem. Our deer population is quite high - the number of deer that stream through my inside-the-perimeter neighborhood off Oglethorpe Avenue is alarmingly high for instance, however there just aren't many places where you can fire any type of firearm, legally or safely, without posing a possible threat to an existing structure and the individuals who might be in that building or on the property.
It's also clear this is something which is in direct response to the intentional shooting of the dog, Ivy. Kinman acknowledges this and said "The (no doubt) depraved person who shot Ivy was not acting as a hunter. He/she was using a firearm illegally on county property, and, according to the police, probably shot the dog deliberately. This is not the way hunters act."
As a result, it's going to be important for the commission to not overreach on this issue because, quite frankly, no amount of hunting restrictions would have deterred the fella who shot Ivy. The shooter was taking a deliberate and intentional shot at the dog and was doing so illegally on county property. This wasn't an accidental shooting where a hunter missed his mark and struck a dog a couple of hundred yards away.
And though this sounds a bit critical of the response, it actually isn't meant to be at all. I think Lowry is doing a very good job in researching this matter - as is Girtz based on the volume of knowledge he has acquired on this subject in just a short period of time - and it's prompted us to take a look at an issue which, with increased development coming in our more rural areas, is going to be becoming bigger down the road.
Both Kinman and Girtz acknowledge this:
With these things in mind, we need to focus our efforts where we can make a difference to ensure that our ordinances are written to protect lives, homes and property; make sure enforcement measures are adaquate to keep tragedies like the recent shooting of Ivey on county property; and ensure that safe, legal hunting continues, so as to manage the deer population.
- Girtz
I'm an urban dweller, so I don't have to deal with the possibility of bullets whizzing by my ear while I'm out for a jog. But if this really is a problem in parts of the county where residential development has gotten dense around hunting areas, then, yes, perhaps we need to acknowledge that our land use plan, if built out, will require restrictions on firearms in certain areas. I'm open-minded about this and will need to hear from the people who live in those areas and the commissioners who represent them.
- Kinman
So what's the solution? Kinman said she felt my 'tiered approach' was a strong possibility, though I can't take credit for it. Girtz had mentioned that to me right after Lowry began investigating the matter. Girtz said limiting the areas where one could hunt with a rifle to larger parcels of undeveloped land - such as in eastern portions of Athens-Clarke County - was a possibility, and that it might be interesting to explore extending the length of hunting season in conjunction with a targeted rifle ban.
"Counties are allowed to extend the season, and several have done so to limit the deer population," Girtz said. "... I mention (extending the hunting season), as Quality Deer Management Association biologists believe it would allow the deer population to stay at present levels, rather than rise further."
They both stressed Lowry's ability to seek answers and solutions from all sides of the issue and expressed confidence in his ability to find a workable solution, if one is even necessary. I, for one, think the guy's been getting a bad rap on this whole thing as the 'commissioner who wants to ban hunting,' and I said so on Tim Bryant's show last week. Lowry has met with numerous stakeholders in this thing and if any proposal does emerge, it will only be after he's done extensive research on the topic.
Girtz, who told me he's accompanied Doug Lowry on a few of his fact-finding missions and meetings on this topic, sent over some interesting background facts on hunting in Athens-Clarke County.
- There are very few parcels of land where discharging a firearm in Clarke County is legal, given the current ordinance requiring discharge to occur 300 yards from a structure and 150 yards from a public road (though there are some exceptions in that code - such as an Agricultural Permit for the benefit of growers who seek to limit damage to their crops). Lowry had the Planning Department put together a map of the county including all streets and structures, along with circles scaled to 300 yards and 150 yards drawn on clear acetate. The parcels of land where discharge is allowable are largely in the Morton Road/Barnett Shoals Corridor, along with just a few other parcels near the northern county border.
- The local deer population is quite dense. As many have read in the Athens Banner-Herald, our deer management region, as designated by the DNR, has approximately 45 deer per square mile of forest. The Quality Deer Management Association believes this is almost twice what the land can sustain. This often leads to deer that are in poor health because of competition for food. Because there are some "refuges" for deer in Clarke, where deer can wander freely (but where hunting is not permitted), the population tends to remain high. This results in high deer/vehicle collision rates, prompting special designation by the DNR of Highway 78 E and W and Highway 129 as "high accident" roads.
- In the 15 years since the ACC Police Department has been keeping electronic records, there has not been a reported hunting-related death in Athens.
It's worth noting that the first two background facts appear to pose a contradictory problem. Our deer population is quite high - the number of deer that stream through my inside-the-perimeter neighborhood off Oglethorpe Avenue is alarmingly high for instance, however there just aren't many places where you can fire any type of firearm, legally or safely, without posing a possible threat to an existing structure and the individuals who might be in that building or on the property.
It's also clear this is something which is in direct response to the intentional shooting of the dog, Ivy. Kinman acknowledges this and said "The (no doubt) depraved person who shot Ivy was not acting as a hunter. He/she was using a firearm illegally on county property, and, according to the police, probably shot the dog deliberately. This is not the way hunters act."
As a result, it's going to be important for the commission to not overreach on this issue because, quite frankly, no amount of hunting restrictions would have deterred the fella who shot Ivy. The shooter was taking a deliberate and intentional shot at the dog and was doing so illegally on county property. This wasn't an accidental shooting where a hunter missed his mark and struck a dog a couple of hundred yards away.
And though this sounds a bit critical of the response, it actually isn't meant to be at all. I think Lowry is doing a very good job in researching this matter - as is Girtz based on the volume of knowledge he has acquired on this subject in just a short period of time - and it's prompted us to take a look at an issue which, with increased development coming in our more rural areas, is going to be becoming bigger down the road.
Both Kinman and Girtz acknowledge this:
With these things in mind, we need to focus our efforts where we can make a difference to ensure that our ordinances are written to protect lives, homes and property; make sure enforcement measures are adaquate to keep tragedies like the recent shooting of Ivey on county property; and ensure that safe, legal hunting continues, so as to manage the deer population.
- Girtz
I'm an urban dweller, so I don't have to deal with the possibility of bullets whizzing by my ear while I'm out for a jog. But if this really is a problem in parts of the county where residential development has gotten dense around hunting areas, then, yes, perhaps we need to acknowledge that our land use plan, if built out, will require restrictions on firearms in certain areas. I'm open-minded about this and will need to hear from the people who live in those areas and the commissioners who represent them.
- Kinman
So what's the solution? Kinman said she felt my 'tiered approach' was a strong possibility, though I can't take credit for it. Girtz had mentioned that to me right after Lowry began investigating the matter. Girtz said limiting the areas where one could hunt with a rifle to larger parcels of undeveloped land - such as in eastern portions of Athens-Clarke County - was a possibility, and that it might be interesting to explore extending the length of hunting season in conjunction with a targeted rifle ban.
"Counties are allowed to extend the season, and several have done so to limit the deer population," Girtz said. "... I mention (extending the hunting season), as Quality Deer Management Association biologists believe it would allow the deer population to stay at present levels, rather than rise further."
They both stressed Lowry's ability to seek answers and solutions from all sides of the issue and expressed confidence in his ability to find a workable solution, if one is even necessary. I, for one, think the guy's been getting a bad rap on this whole thing as the 'commissioner who wants to ban hunting,' and I said so on Tim Bryant's show last week. Lowry has met with numerous stakeholders in this thing and if any proposal does emerge, it will only be after he's done extensive research on the topic.
posted by Jmac at 8:10 AM
2 Comments:
I'm familiar with both kinds of dangers - the near-constant danger of colliding with a deer when driving in certain parts of the county AND the rare but, extremely scary, encounters with center-fire rounds whizzing far too close (though some of those few encounters have come from idiots with pistols rather than hunters and some have been experiences in Oconee County). When we lived in Waverly Woods, a couple of our neighbors reported bullets striking their houses - I can't verify but these were pretty credible folks.
I kinda wish that we could allow bow-hunting year-round and also use some methods of administering birth-control or conception inhibitors because we really do have both problems - few places to hunt with rifles safely and far too many deer.
Interesting that it is oft-cited that we have had no hunting-related deaths but we've had so many deer/car accidents that it seems that there would have been at least a couple of fatalities but maybe we've just been lucky. Growing up on the southeastern part of the county, you had to learn to drive around the deer and there are a few tricks to learning that skill. A lot of people without that kind of experience are surprised to learn that deer actually run into cars as much as cars run into deer!
Yeah, I'm in favor of bow-hunting only. I don't really like deer (except for the eating), but I don't really like guns either. I think the bows are a decent compromise. Maybe you could get a discount on one if you turned in your rifle.
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